Daming Military Empire

Chapter 201 There Are Peasant Uprisings in Japan

During the Chongzheng period of the Ming Dynasty, Dongying had just entered the Edo period from the chaotic Warring States period. At the end of the Warring States period in Japan and the Azuchi Momoyama period, the daimyo of the Mikawa Kingdom, the first generation of the Edo shogunate Tokugawa Ieyasu defeated the old enemy Toyotomi, and established in Edo. The Tokugawa shogunate, Japan has since entered a temporary peace.

Tokugawa Iemitsu, the third general of the Tokugawa shogunate, ruled Dongying in the seventh year of Chongzheng (1634 A.D.). The second time the "ban on religion" was ordered, the Catholics on Kyushu Island could not bear the brutal rule of the shogunate, and there was a faint tendency to rebel.

This news unexpectedly reached Zhu Cijiong's ears. It turned out that after defeating the pirate Liu Xiangbu, the Nanyang Navy conducted a surprise interrogation on the captives, forcing them to confess the location of the pirates' lair, which was located on several deserted islands in Ryukyu. Due to his eagerness to destroy the Dutch Navy's Eastern Second Fleet, Zhu Cijiong did not immediately send people to clean up the pirates' lair. After the combined fleet of the Daming Navy returned with a big victory, Zhu Cijiong immediately dispatched the Nanyang Navy to clean up the pirates.

It took only a few days for the Nanyang Navy to wipe out the pirates' lair, not only seized a lot of property, but also rescued some civilians and sea merchants who were enslaved by the pirates.These sea merchants were the merchants of Ming Dynasty who were plundered by the Dutch pirate Liu Xiang and went to Japan to do business.

Now that the Dutch have been beaten away, and the pirate Liu Xiangbu has also been wiped out, Ming naturally wants to monopolize all the foreign trade of Japan. All the property and cargo ships robbed by the pirates were returned to them. They also kindly met with the representatives of the sea merchants and asked them about their current situation in Dongying.

One of these sea merchants named Zhang Taisuke revealed a secret. During this time, the peasants on Jiuzhou Island in Dongying were preparing to revolt. Their leader, Amakusa Shiro, happened to be acquainted with Zhang Taisuke, and because of lack of weapons, he died. I approached him and asked him to find a way to sell some of the used weapons eliminated by the Ming army.However, Zhang Taijie was robbed by pirates before he could find a source of used weapons, so the matter was delayed.

This is a very important piece of information. Dongying is a big disaster. If it weren’t for the fact that the Dutch are so determined to dominate the treasure island Dongfan, Zhu Cijiong’s first goal would be Dongying. Now that the Dutch have been defeated, it is natural to Consider the issue of Japan.

Dongying was not weak in the middle and late Ming Dynasty. During the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, Toyotomi Hideyoshi of Dongying thought about unifying Southeast Asia. If he hadn’t died suddenly during the expedition to North Korea, what would have happened to the end of the Wanli Korean War? It's hard to say.

You must know that Toyotomi Hideyoshi was only a famous name in the Warring States period of Dongying. He only roughly unified Dongying, and he was able to organize an army of 20 to go to Korea. Now the Tokugawa shogunate in Dongying is much stronger than his Toyotomi. It is not impossible for an army of 50 million to come out to guard Japan.

Although Ming Dynasty is a new power, Zhu Cijiong has already started to learn to use the thinking of a great power to think about problems. The great powers will never force a feudal dynasty that is in a strong period. They will try to weaken the feudal dynasty. When they are weak Let's start again, like the Qing Dynasty, like the Mughal Empire.The Manchu Qing was lucky. After being tortured to death by opium, the Mughal Empire was not colonized by the great powers, and the Mughal Empire was directly divided up by the great powers!

If you think about it with the thinking of a great power, it is natural that you can't fight hard with Dongpu at this time. If you do it hard, even if Ming wins in the end, it will suffer heavy losses.Daming just broke up with the overlord of the sea, the Netherlands. If he suffers heavy losses due to the expedition to Japan, the Netherlands will definitely take the opportunity to retaliate, and then Da Ming will be in danger.

The best way is to take advantage of his illness to kill him. If he is not ill, let him get out of the illness. Now this peasant uprising is the best opportunity to make him terminally ill.

Zhu Cijiong knew that under normal circumstances, the peasant uprising in Dongying would not cause much trouble. If it could reach the level of Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong, then the Tokugawa shogunate would definitely not be able to escape the clutches of the Dutch. The Dutch did not invade Dongying at this time, which proves from the side that the peasant uprising certainly did not make the Tokugawa shogunate extremely ill.

How can this work? It's fine if he doesn't know. Now that he knows, he can't let this peasant uprising continue as normal. He must be treated as terminally ill!
After getting the news, Zhu Cijiong immediately asked the navy to send out the fastest sailing boat, and sent Zhang Taisuke to Kyushu Island to contact that Amakusa Shiro at the fastest speed, and asked Xu Tianqi to take a Jinyiwei spy as a businessman to accompany him for protection, so as to find out as soon as possible The scale of this peasant uprising, how many people will participate, and what weapons do they urgently need.

Dongban is not far from Kyushu Island, they only took a few days to reach Kyushu Island, but they came a bit late, at this time Amakusa Shiro had already rebelled against Shimabara and Karatsu, and had already occupied the Shimabara Peninsula The southern part and most of Amakusa Island.

Fortunately, they didn't come too late. The Tokugawa shogunate hadn't responded yet, and the army that suppressed the uprising was still gone.Amakusa Shiro has gathered nearly 4 people, but half of them are old, weak, women and children, and less than [-] are really capable of fighting. Moreover, they are extremely lacking in weapons, only a few knives and arrows, and many of them can only carry hoes and kitchen knives on their backs. !

Zhang Taisuke quickly contacted Amakusa Shiro and told him that he could get a lot of weapons, and asked him to bear with it and wait for him to send the weapons before launching them.

Immediately afterwards, Zhang Taijie hurried back to Dongfan, reported everything to Zhu Cijiong, and waited for Zhu Cijiong's arrangement.

Zhu Cijiong roughly estimated that to block the counterattack of the Tokugawa shogunate, at least [-] flintlock guns and at least [-] artillery pieces are needed. However, too many flintlock guns are not good, and it is easy for the Tokugawa shogunate Realizing that Da Ming was behind the scenes, he simply collected all the [-] to [-] Dutch matchlock guns and pirate bird guns, and picked [-] of the lightest cannons from the Dutch artillery, letting Nanyang water The division pretended to be a pirate escort, and found hundreds of "volunteers" proficient in Japanese from the Nanyang Navy to teach them how to use muskets and cannons.

The more famous Shimabara Uprising in the history of Dongying has completely changed its direction. Originally, the Shimabara Uprising only affected the Shimabara and Karatsu Fans of the Kyushu Island Hizen Kingdom, and was suppressed by the Tokugawa Shogunate in less than half a year. , Since our Chongzheng Emperor Zhu Cijiong intervened, the uprising was out of control and eventually led to the demise of the Tokugawa Shogunate.

Perhaps, history predestined that the peasant uprising during this period would surely lead to the demise of a dynasty. Now that Zhu Cijiong has come, the Ming Dynasty has escaped the doom of extinction and gradually moved towards glory, so it may be best for Dongying to bear the doom choose.

Of course, these are all things to say later, let’s skip them for now, let’s go back to the Shimabara Uprising.

Legend has it that the leader of the Shimabara Uprising, Amakusa Shiro. Shizhen was an unusually handsome young man, and he was only 16 years old at the time. Of course, these are not the point. The point is that this Amakusa Shiro is very powerful. The civilians were besieged by the 12 troops of the Tokugawa shogunate in the abandoned Hara Castle of the Arima family, and were bombarded by Dutch battleships for [-] days, but he miraculously held on for nearly two months. With all the supplies running out, the shogunate army may not have broken the original city, which is enough to show that he is quite talented in military affairs.

Therefore, when the weapons aided by Daming arrived, he immediately organized the rebel army to launch a fierce attack on Tomioka Castle, the last fortress on Amakusa Island. With less than 5000 people, with the assistance of volunteers from the Ming Dynasty, three hundred artillery pieces fired in turn, forming a barrage of bullets, overwhelming the defenders on the city wall, unable to raise their heads. Amakusa Shiro led [-] young men to the city wall quickly Below, the city wall of Dongying is not as high as the city wall of Ming Dynasty, so they quickly attacked the city wall with a bunch of simple stairs. Gangcheng was occupied.

After conquering Tomioka Castle and the entire Amakusa Island, there is no more shogunate forces. The rebel army finally has its own base. With this base, Ming can pretend to be a pirate to deliver supplies for them. The rebel army finally does not have to face the situation of running out of ammunition and food. Dilemma.At the same time, the 5 to [-] civilians in Fukuoka City were also interested in the rebel army. The power of the rebel army soared to more than [-], and the combat power of young and middle-aged people also reached nearly [-].

Of course, Tomioka Castle was just the beginning. Amakusa Shiro was not satisfied with a small Amakusa Island. He continued to attack Shimabara Castle on the Shimabara Peninsula. These two cities are now only the places of Hizen Kungfu. Armed on the defensive, the combat effectiveness is naturally not much higher. In front of the advanced muskets and artillery of the Dutch, their defenders of Shimabara Castle were also vulnerable. In another day, Shimabara Castle was also occupied by the rebels.

This is terrible. Originally, most of the civilians of the Shimabara and Amakusa clans were devoted to the rebel army, but the rebel army never conquered the main cities of these two clans. Hiding somewhere, defeat is only a matter of time, so most people dare not join.

When these two main cities came together, the civilians of the two feudal clans finally saw hope and joined the rebel army one after another. The number of rebel troops increased sharply, and soon reached hundreds of thousands!Although there are only 5 people with real combat effectiveness among them, this is enough. You must know that they have [-] to [-] birdcracks and matchlock guns in their hands, as well as [-] Dutch artillery pieces. Much more advanced.

It was already early December at this time, and the Tokugawa shogunate finally responded, and urgently sent Itakura Shigemasa as the special envoy of the shogunate to Kyushu to suppress the rebel army.After Itakura arrived in Kyushu, he launched two attacks against the insurgents, both of which failed.

The shogunate then sent Matsudaira Nobuzuna to Kyushu to supervise the battle. Matsudaira Nobuzuna besieged Shimabara Castle with an army of 12. Wan Qingzhuang, as well as muskets, and artillery, what can the 12 shogunate army do!
(End of this chapter)